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On February 3rd 1829 the twenty-seven year old Victor
Hugo published Le Dernier jour d”un condamné. The book is a
fictionalised diary of a prisoner’s obsessive despair from the day
that his sentence is pronounced, through the period of waiting
alone in his prison cell in Bicêtre, to the day of his execution.
The condemned man’s thoughts never stray far from his own
predicament, but he nevertheless muses upon the nature of capital
punishment, its physical and psychological tortures, the role of
the state in selecting a judicious and humane punishment, and the
history of those who have inhabited his cell before him. His diary
is an account of the last few weeks of a man’s life, rather than
just the final day. …

34170Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné3Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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